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Since my wife and I will be adopting an African American baby, she and I have been learning about adoption, the “primal grieving” that some adoptees go through, and also about transracial issues, since I’m Filipino, my wife is White, and our kids are going to be all sorts of beautiful colors.
We’ve bought books and have tried to really immerse ourselves and learn as much as we can. We both saw a really good video last night on the issues of color, within the black community, and also the still-pervasive perceptions on black, white, good, bad. The video begins with girls sharing the issues within the black community between light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks. At minute 3:20 of the video, an 1960′s experiment was re-visited and re-created in 2005, where black girls and boys were asked which doll they would pick and why — their choices were a black doll and a white doll. Guess which doll 99% of the kids picked?
The experiment speaks loudly against the subtle and sometimes not so subtle racism that still exists in american society. I feel badly for these children — their worldview of the “good and bad” impacts their views on themselves; their feelings of self-worth. I look forward to a time when black children begin having a healthy and true perception of who they are and the innate goodness and worth they have.
Below is the movie; enjoy and learn something new:
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Which doll did they pick? I honestly have no clue.
@Archeious,
Watch the video to find out.
While I agree that there is plenty of bias in the world between races, genders, sizes, etc, I am sure that the 2005 study that was depicted in the video could have been done better. For instance, there seemed to be leading questions, like when the children were holding the white doll they would say, “now show us the bad doll” as if it was a different doll. I’m sure there could have been some other controls, different clothes, rooms, dolls, interviewers, etc to help make the study more sound. There are a ton of other questions as well, like “how was the sample choosen?” “Are they all related and grown up in a house hold that made them feel that way?” “How would white children have responded?” “Would they have said that the white dolls were bad?” Would responses been different in the south, west, north, east? etc.
Do see other areas where the study could improve?
@chad,
“For instance, there seemed to be leading questions, like when the children were holding the white doll they would say, “now show us the bad doll” as if it was a different doll.”
Exactly — that’s the child’s perception — it is a *different* doll.
“I’m sure there could have been some other controls, different clothes, rooms, dolls, interviewers, etc to help make the study more sound.”
Yeah, I think so too.
Regarding your comments on sample size calculations — probably more could have been shared here. The original study used basic psychometric methodologies for perception studies (qualitative). The 2005 study just followed the earlier model. Psychometric studies conducted by universities are typically sound.
To your point of “how was the sample choosen?” — the more informative question is about size, not how a sample was chosen. For a population of black children, the typical way to choose that sample is via deterministic random sample — that is, choose black children at the outset, then pick randomly within that group. The question about size is important because the larger the size, the more representative it is — up to a point — there’s a trade-off between costs and representation. But, for focus group-type studies, sample size questions aren’t as relevant anymore, because these studies are qualitative by nature, not quantitative.
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